Impact Radius – What’s in it for affiliates?

There has been quite a bit of coverage about Impact Radius in the last week but if you were like me earlier today then you might still be trying to work your way through the press release to actually figure out what’s in it for affiliates. Thankfully I’m just off the phone to Ricki Jones (ex Affilinet, CJ & Wheel) who will be heading up the UK office and so I’ve got a bit more idea of what’s going on now

The company grew out of the realisation that often a traditional affiliate network could best serve their clients by getting out the way and letting affiliates speak directly to merchants. Even when networks offer a full affiliate management service to their clients it’s hard for them to know either side of the business as well as the people working in it each day. So with that in mind Impact Radius is about offering a solution rather then a service.

3 Key Issues for Affiliates

1. Open Conact – Yellow Pages style directory with full contact information for both advertisers & affiliates (media partners in Impact Radius terms) This means it should be easy for both sides of the relationship to contact each other and to find relevant partners to work with.
2. Pricing Structure – Impact Radius override fees are much lower than most networks with the highest level being 10% and sliding down with volume. The transparency means that you know the full costs to the advertiser of your activity and so for example you could suggest a higher CPA based on sending a higher volume of leads that would bring the override down.
3. Negotiation – using the directory you would be able to find merchants and approach them with an offer of a commission rate that would be acceptable to you. This is managed by insertion orders back and forth which are all logged when the agreement is made. Up for discussion would be commission rate, cookie duration, minimum CPC’s, any performance caps, incentive tiers and any other specific terms and conditions required.

There are a host of other features that should also be interesting for example flexible payments (daily if required!) and also facilities to track offline activity through unique voucher code, pay-per-call and unique URL tracking.

Time will tell how it works out as aspects like the directory idea might be hard work to reach a tipping point before it becomes an “everyone who’s anyone” type directory. Overall though I think it’s a really interesting business and it will be intriguing to watch how it finds it place in the UK market.

Three and a half years after sending this visitor to Buyagift I’ve just made £7.76

The affiliate program is on Affiliate Window and I interviewed Graham Keen from Buyagift around the same time as I sent that first click

A quick note to thank Gone Digging for the wine I received recently. It’s great to see the personalised bottles for real and in the boxes it does make for a great gift.

The Gone Digging affiliate program is on Webgains and they are also running a competition at the moment to win yourself some personalised wine. You can follow Jim Kinloch on twitter for more info about how to win.

It’s also nice that I can write two articles about this gift including one over at my wine site about personalised wine gifts

Thanks also to Nadeem at Azam Marketing for sorting this out.

This morning I had a chat to Julia Nisted who is European Affiliate Manager for the eBay Partner Network and she outlined some very interesting changes to the commission structure of the affiliate program planned from 1st September 2009.

Currently eBay pay out a CPA on new users and a percentage of revenue from sellers fees but from 1st September they are going to switch to a new concept which they have called Quality Click Pricing. As the most simple level this is a switch to CPC payouts which may seem like a strange step at first but the CPC payment is going to be based on the quality of the traffic and vary for each publisher on a daily basis.

The quality algorithm is based on both the short term and long term value of the click to eBay with various elements deciding an EPC on a daily basis. For example sales completed closer to the click time would be valued higher as there is more direct evidence that the click contributed to the sale. In some ways this is an attempt to vary the ‘last click wins’ approach that is currently in place with most affiliate programs and to help content affiliates and others who produce quality sites. Since eBay can tell what a click from a specific affiliate is normally worth to them then it’s a creative way to pay appropriately.

Julia said that the motivation for this change was to see their good affiliates rewarded with higher payouts and their bad affiliates to earn less as an incentive to improve. eBay believe that some of their smaller affiliates are providing some of their best quality traffic and so this allows them to invest in growing that side of the network. During the beta test they also found that it encouraged some affiliates to work on improving their traffic either through developing their own sites or looking at their traffic sources.

More info is available on the eBay blog including the official press release.

From my point of view it seems a bold move and I hope it’s one that works out well. It’s nice to see a creative approach to solving a problem and they seem to have avoided the Adsense approach which leaves you without a clue about why some clicks earned so much more than others. I’d be really keen to hear in the comments any other opinions or from people active on the eBay Partner Network about how you think the change will affect you.

As a side note we also discussed that eBay doesn’t seem to be talked about much in the UK affiliate marketing community and I wasn’t totally sure of the reasons behind this. Are many of you active on the eBay network? Given that eBay.co.uk’s unique audience was over 17m in June this year it seems we are all buying and selling there but not talking about the affiliate program!

A bit of a turn around from my usual role in an interview as this time I’m answering the questions.

Leo Fogarty sent me over some questions via email which I did my best to answer for his blog. Head over there and have a read if that’s of interest.

Just a short post to comment on the smart new look over at Paid On Results. Shame to see the back of POR man but it’s a nice fresh new design.

Clarke Duncan, Director and Shareholder, spoke about the company’s new identity:-

“This is an exciting time for Paid On Results as we continue to grow steadily and recruit additional staff in the face of the global recession. The rebranding reflects this excitement and optimism. The future for Paid On Results sees further growth aided by an increased emphasis on sales and marketing. Today Paid On Results can look to the future with confidence, largely because of its strong background in bringing to the fore innovative technology and in employing knowledgeable, friendly staff. We will continue to build our independent business based on these strong foundations. “

Although I didn’t make it to the a4uawards this year I was delighted to see that Books Direct were awarded Highly Commended status in the Innovative Merchant of the Year category. Only losing out to the mighty Prezzybox and the Zak Edwards 10 step guide to winning awards

The Books Direct entry was based around the alternative to brand name bidding that Paul Wheatley and I worked on last year.

Here is an extract from the Books Direct email about awarding the prize money.

So there were a total of thirty tickets in the draw and the final prize pool totaled £17,331.86. Sarah Day – the Online Marketing Manager for Books Direct presented a company update to the attending affiliates followed by a short open discussion. Some interesting suggestions on how to improve the Books Direct programme were raised and we will be looking at how best to implement these in the very near future.

Finally, after months of anticipation the time came to pick the two winners. Helen Smith, Head of Online and Creative at Books Direct performed the honour and the first name to be pulled from the draw was easyfundraising.org.uk. Unable to attend the day we were able to contact Jonathan Scott on the phone later in the afternoon to share the good news. The second winning ticket that was pulled out belonged to Richard Gibson from Freebiejeebies.co.uk. Richard was in attendance and needless to say utterly delighted at the result!

So congratulations to both easyfundrasing.org.uk and Freebiejeebies.co.uk, both win a staggering £8,665.93 each!

It was good to try something a little different and hopefully it’s worked well for the Books Direct affiliate program as a whole.